Martha puts a Southern twist on Easter with her traditional stuffed Smithfield ham recipe. Watch as she goes ham—literally—prepping, scoring, and seasoning this savory showstopper. From her signature stuffing technique to classic Southern sides, this spread is perfect for your holiday table.
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00:00To be called a Smithfield ham, the hams have to be cured and processed in one area of Smithfield, Virginia.
00:06The ham is hand-salted first, dry-cured, and then smoked very, very slowly over hickory, and it's aged for many months.
00:14We're using a 10-pound Smithfield ham. It's called Premium Easy Carve.
00:19First thing you have to do is bone the ham because we want to create a cavity in the center of the ham to fill with those wonderful grits and greens.
00:29Your butcher will do this for you if you don't want to deal with getting the bone out yourself.
00:34Now you have to look at where the bone is the closest to the surface of the ham.
00:38That's where you're going to find a kind of natural seam where it makes it really easy to remove the bone.
00:46What I like to do is just cut down, and then with the point of a boning knife, just keep touching that bone all the way along.
00:59And then I will be able to open the ham. It kind of almost does it naturally.
01:05So just keep pulling the meat away from the bone, and we're almost there.
01:10And that bone is great because it can be used for the basis for a wonderful pea soup or bean soup.
01:18Now you see you have a nice cavity in here. You want to take out all fat and sinew and some extra meat for the stuffing.
01:29The meat from the cavity should be diced, and you're going to want about two cups of this diced ham, one pound.
01:39And now we have to start on the rest of the stuffing.
01:44In a big saute pan, melt six tablespoons of butter, four cloves of garlic that have been very finely chopped,
01:54and one large white onion, finely chopped.
01:58Just cook this mixture until it's soft.
02:03And now the green. These are mustard greens, collard greens, you can use kale, and of course, turnip greens.
02:13They're very tender, and the larger leaves stack one atop each other and then roll them up tightly like that.
02:22This will save you a lot of time in this process of which they call chiffonading, and as finely as possible.
02:32This fine chiffonade creates a very tender green.
02:37When you unroll this, you have really beautiful, long, thin strips of green.
02:46And you do this to the mustard green and to the collards.
02:51Now these are cooking very nicely.
02:55Before I add the turnip greens, I'm going to add a half a cup of dry white wine.
03:08Now these have to cook for a long time, about 30 to 45 minutes, until they're very, very tender.
03:15Cover them almost completely so that they kind of steam and cook at the same time.
03:20Now in a saucepan about this size, we want to start cooking our grits.
03:26Get a good quality grit, by the way.
03:28This is a good, the Quaker quick grits is very nice.
03:31This is white corn ground to a grit consistency.
03:36And we need, in the pan, we need three cups of milk, this is whole milk, and one cup of heavy cream.
03:46So this is not a low calorie filling, but it is southern and good.
03:54When that cream and milk comes to a boil, stir in one cup of your quick grits.
04:01Stirring constantly.
04:05And cook for about five minutes.
04:08So here we have nice, thick grits.
04:10Remove them from the heat.
04:15And we're going to stir in one and a half cups of freshly grated Parmesan cheese.
04:20I have two cups here.
04:21We're going to just reserve a half a cup for something else.
04:25Make sure you grate it quite finely.
04:27And two teaspoons of chopped flat leaf parsley and a half a teaspoon of thyme leaves.
04:34And now you're going to spread this mixture onto a half sheet, baking sheet, to cool.
04:39Everything's cool enough so that we can now put together the stuffing and then put the stuffing in the boned ham.
04:47The greens first have to be put into some cheesecloth.
04:52I have four layers of cheesecloth here.
04:55What we want to do is get rid of all the excess moisture.
04:58Watch how much moisture comes out of these greens.
05:01Okay, so now we just add this to our bowl.
05:05And now we're going to add our ham.
05:09And our grits, which are also cooled.
05:25But if you catch them right at this point, they're still creamy.
05:29And they'll mix very nicely into the ham and greens.
05:35This makes a lot of stuffing.
05:37The leftover stuffing is going to be turned into a gratin and roasted at the same time as the ham.
05:47It's like turkey stuffing.
05:49Now, if you weren't going to put any ham in this, you could mix up the grits and the greens by themselves.
05:57And then make a gratin just of that mixture, adding two eggs to it.
06:02That's for the vegetarians in your household.
06:05And so here's our stuffing ready to spoon into the ham cavity.
06:10Now, the first thing that I like to do is score the outside hard skin of the ham with little slits.
06:17That will give me a guideline for my string ties and keep those string ties in place.
06:23So we want to do maybe three or four slits at about, oh, one and a quarter inch intervals all the way around the ham.
06:30Notice I'm only going down, oh, like an eighth of an inch.
06:33One, two, three.
06:38That's good.
06:40And now we're going to spoon some of the stuffing right here into the cavity.
06:47We want to make the stuffing as even throughout this ham as possible.
06:56So now we're going to tie it up with cotton butcher string.
07:01Don't use anything that's not cotton or natural fiber.
07:05If you have linen string, that's okay.
07:07But no polyester, please.
07:09Now we're going to run this twine now through those slits that you made in the skin.
07:15You might need to poke it down there with the back of a little paring knife.
07:21We want this first tie to be very tight.
07:27Now we go down to the next little slit.
07:31And we're going to recreate what I like to think of as the blanket stitch.
07:36It's just like embroidery.
07:39And you go under that part of the string and pull this string taut like that.
07:49So you see it's staying in its slits.
07:52And you've now gone down to the next layer.
07:56Now hold this with your fingers like this.
07:58Find your next insert.
08:01Come up around your ham.
08:05Go under there.
08:08And you can take this other string and go around the ham like this and tie it off.
08:18And then you rub your whole ham with black pepper, freshly ground.
08:24I like pepper, but you can overdo this, so be careful.
08:29And now cut your cheesecloth so it is twice the length of the ham, leaving a little bit of extra to tie.
08:37What we're trying to accomplish here is to cover the ham and to hold the stuffing in.
08:44And we tie this closed at the shank end.
08:49Think of it as the ham's Easter bonnet.
08:54And it's ready for the roasting pan.
08:56Now I'm going to put this in a rack in a roasting pan and bake it, the cut side down, for 12 minutes a pound at 350 degrees for about two to two and a quarter hours.
09:08I'll show you how to make that quick rattan, which is so good, with the leftover filling.
09:13Just gently beat with a fork two eggs.
09:17You're going to add these to your stuffing mixture.
09:30And choose a dish, a shallow baking dish that's like a tian, they call it in French, or a pyrex baking dish.
09:38The eggs you see already have lightened up this mixture.
09:41They'll cause it to puff a little bit during the baking.
09:45And this will be baked for about 30 minutes.
09:49Put this in the oven about a half an hour before your ham comes out of the oven.
09:54And that half a cup of cheese that you reserved will be sprinkled right on the top.
10:00Bake at 400 degrees until bubbly and golden brown.
10:04And now the vegetables.
10:06Nothing could be easier than oven roasted vegetables.
10:08Baby turnips, these pretty little white turnips, and baby carrots.
10:13These are so delectable.
10:15And the way that you prepare these is to use this little beaked knife.
10:21It's a turning knife.
10:23And you just can cut off the bottom of the turnip if you like.
10:29And the shape of this knife makes it very easy to turn the vegetables.
10:33I try not to take off too much of the vegetable.
10:36I don't want to waste it.
10:38But you go right up to the green stems and just leave most of the stems on.
10:46You can add the trimmings to the stock pot, or you can add them nicely to your compost.
10:52Carrots are done the same way.
10:54Now to roast these, you can just drizzle a little bit of very good virgin olive oil in the bottom of a roasting pan.
11:09And just put your vegetables right in the pan.
11:14I like to move them around so they get a little coating of oil on them.
11:18If the vegetables are a little larger than this, not so tender and young, you can, of course, pre-boil these a little bit.
11:27And then roast them.
11:29But I find that these cook so nicely, the way they are.
11:33Sprinkling of coarse salt and freshly ground pepper.
11:39And then if you like, just a sprig or two of fresh thyme.
11:45And a sprig or two of parsley too, if you like.
11:50And these go into a 450 degree oven.
11:53And stir occasionally until the vegetables are very tender and pierced with the tip of a knife.
11:58And that's going to take, for vegetables this size, about 45 minutes.
12:02Timing is very important when creating a meal like this.
12:07So if you have only one oven, I would suggest first roasting your ham.
12:11Getting that out of the way early in the day.
12:14Because that can sit.
12:15It doesn't have to be, it can be served at room temperature.
12:18It doesn't have to be piping hot when you serve it.
12:20And then I would roast the vegetables.
12:23I would make my biscuits at the last minute.
12:26And I would do the gratin also at the last minute.
12:32And no southern buffet would be a southern buffet without the biscuits.
12:36And these are quite unusual because they're flavored with sage.
12:40And the first thing I'm going to do is make two tablespoons of chopped sage.
12:43You don't want to chop these in the cuisinart because you don't want to really bruise them.
12:47I'm using a really sharp steel knife and just set those aside until your biscuit mixture is done.
12:53Now, there's this big controversy here at the studio and in any kitchen about biscuits.
12:59Do you make them by hand or do you make them in a food processor?
13:04Well, I've sort of combined making them by hand with the food processor.
13:08And what I do first is mix my dry ingredients.
13:11Put three cups of cake flour.
13:13Don't use self-rising flour in this recipe.
13:15And then we're going to add one and a half tablespoons of baking powder.
13:19Must make sure that your baking powder is fresh.
13:23Nothing's worse.
13:25I tried making biscuits one Sunday morning and they didn't rise at all.
13:30And I thought, oh, what did I do wrong?
13:32It was the baking powder.
13:33It was old.
13:34And baking powder does get old.
13:36And also two teaspoons of coarse salt.
13:39And I'm also going to add a quarter of a teaspoon of freshly ground black pepper.
13:44And now you can cut your butter.
13:46And we're using six tablespoons of unsalted butter.
13:49And this is very cold and very hard.
13:52You can cut that in with your little pastry cutter.
13:56You can break it in with your fingertips if you don't have really hot hands.
14:00Or you can do what I'm going to do.
14:03Because this, I find, saves a tremendous amount of time.
14:06I'm just going to add a little bit.
14:08Oh, about a cup of flour to my food processor.
14:12I'm going to add the butter.
14:15And I'm just going to blend it in the food processor.
14:19I'm going to pulse.
14:20So in about, oh, probably 1 20th of the time that it would take you to mix the butter in with your pastry cutter,
14:31you have it all mixed in.
14:32I learned this secret, these little things while I was doing a lot of catering.
14:36And you just can't spend the time.
14:38Now we're going to add buttermilk and this chopped sage.
14:41I'm going to add the chopped sage right now to my mixture.
14:45And now I'm going to add my buttermilk.
14:49You're going to need to add, oh, approximately a cup of buttermilk.
14:53And I'm just very lightly stirring it.
14:57We don't want to overwork it.
15:00Some cooks I know don't even touch their dough with a wooden spoon.
15:04They use only their fingertips.
15:06Now notice I have kneaded this, not at all.
15:09I have mixed it hardly at all.
15:13And it's falling apart, but it's sticking together at the same time.
15:18If you work it more than 15 seconds or so, you have probably overworked your dough.
15:24And it will not give you the satisfactory results of a late and flaky biscuit.
15:29Pat this into a round.
15:34The lighter the touch, the better.
15:39And we're going to cut this into two and three quarter inch rounds.
15:45We're going to do seven around and one in the center.
15:48Now the pan is not greased.
15:51It doesn't have to be.
15:53And you want to place the biscuits close together, touching each other.
15:58Because you want them to rise.
16:01And now brush the tops with just a little bit of buttermilk.
16:04And place a sage leaf on the top of each biscuit.
16:11And bake these at 500 degrees until golden brown.
16:16That's going to take about 20 minutes.
16:18It smells so delicious.
16:21You can smell that cheese and the stuffing.
16:24And now remove the cheesecloth.
16:26But don't remove the strings.
16:30Mmm, looks very nice.
16:32Be careful here.
16:33And now lift this onto a baking sheet.
16:37And we're going to put this into the broiler.
16:42What we want to do is just very gently brown the top of the ham.
16:48Now watch it really closely.
16:50You don't want to burn the ham.
16:52You just want to get that layer, that top layer of the ham nice and glistening brown.
16:58Well, the ham is beautiful.
17:01Now let it sit just for a few moments before you put it out on a platter.
17:08It really needs to just cool off slightly.
17:11Because when you take off the strings, you don't want the whole ham to sort of like collapse.
17:16And while the ham is cooling, you can garnish the serving platter with the rest of the greens.
17:21And spoon the roasted vegetables into the serving dish.
17:24Then carefully snip the strings and move the ham onto the platter.
17:28Place all of the food on your buffet table.
17:31And you're ready for your friends and your family to sit down and enjoy Easter dinner.
17:37It's beautiful. It's colorful. It's extremely delicious.
17:41And it is typically southern.
17:44Our grits and greens stuffed ham.